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Benjamin P. Edwards

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Benjamin Edwards joined the faculty of the William S. Boyd School of Law in 2017. He researches and writes about business and securities law, corporate governance, arbitration, and consumer protection.

Prior to teaching, Professor Edwards practiced as a securities litigator in the New York office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. At Skadden, he represented clients in complex civil litigation, including securities class actions arising out of the Madoff Ponzi scheme and litigation arising out of the 2008 financial crisis. Read More

Stanford Law School offers multiple specialized LLM programs to international students who have practiced law outside the U.S. The Corporate Governance and Practice LLM program admits approximately 20 students annually. Working under the supervision of Professor Michael Klausner, the Faculty Director of the program, the Teaching Fellow will assume significant academic, advising, and administrative responsibilities for these students.   Applicants for this fellowship are sought for a two-year commitment, starting in summer 2022.

The Teaching Fellow will be responsible for teaching two courses: one on corporate law from an economics perspective; and another on corporate law practice. The latter course will include outside speakers from practice. The fellow will also organize other academic and social events, and will be responsible for managing the Corporate Governance and Practice LLM program on a day-to-day basis, advising LLM students on academic and career issues, responding to inquiries from prospective LLM applicants, screening and admitting applicants, and interacting with faculty in support of the LLM program goals and needs. The fellow will have the support of and work with the Associate Dean for Advanced Degree Programs, the Associate Dean for Student Affairs, and the Associate Dean for Admissions. Although this is a full-time position, the fellow should…

Reposting this notice and FAQ distributed last week by the Southeastern Association of Law Schools (SEALS) for those interested in/planning on joining the law academy.

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Each year, SEALS hosts a Prospective Law Teachers Workshop (PLTW), which provides intensive opportunities for VAPs, fellows, and practitioners to network and participate in mock interviews and mock job talks—prior to the actual teaching market. The Workshop also includes a luncheon (separate ticket purchase is required) and 1-on-1 sessions for candidates to receive faculty feedback on their CVs and FAR forms. This year’s Prospective Law Teachers Workshop will be held at The Sandestin Golf and Beach Resort, Florida on Thursday, July 28 through Saturday, July 30, 2022, although the full SEALS conference runs from Wednesday, July 27 through Wednesday, August 3. If you are interested in participating specifically in the Prospective Law Teachers Workshop, please send your CV, and a brief statement explaining your interest, to Professor Leah Chan Grinvald lgrinvald@suffolk.edu. Please also confirm that you are planning on entering the teaching market in August 2022. Applications are due by March 21, 2022, with decisions made no later than March 30, as registration for SEALS opens on April 1. Past PLTW participants have secured…

The University of Illinois College of Law, in partnership with UCLA School of Law, University of Richmond School of Law, and Vanderbilt Law School, invites submissions for the Ninth Annual Workshop for Corporate & Securities Litigation. This workshop will be held on Friday, September 23 and Saturday, September 24, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.

Overview

This annual workshop brings together scholars focused on corporate and securities litigation to present their scholarly works. Papers addressing any aspect of corporate and securities litigation or enforcement are eligible, including securities class actions, fiduciary duty litigation, and SEC enforcement actions. We welcome scholars working in a variety of methodologies, as well as both completed papers and works-in-progress.

Authors whose papers are selected will be invited to present their work at a workshop hosted by the University of Illinois College of Law. Participants will pay for their own travel, lodging, and other expenses.

Submissions

If you are interested in participating, please send the paper you would like to present or an abstract of the paper to corpandsecworkshop@gmail.com by Friday, May 13, 2022. Please include your name, current position, and contact information in the e-mail accompanying the submission. Authors of accepted papers will be notified in June.…

National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC)
June 16-17, 2022
Call for Papers

The National Business Law Scholars Conference (NBLSC) will be held on Thursday and Friday, June 16-17, 2022, at the University of Oklahoma College of Law.

This is the thirteenth meeting of the NBLSC, an annual conference that draws legal scholars from across the United States and around the world. We welcome all scholarly submissions relating to business law. Junior scholars and those considering entering the academy are especially encouraged to participate. If you are thinking about entering the academy and would like to receive informal mentoring and learn more about job market dynamics, please let us know when you make your submission.

Please fill out this form to register and submit an abstract by Friday, April 1, 2022. If you have any questions, concerns, or special requests regarding the schedule, please email Professor Eric C. Chaffee at eric.chaffee@utoledo.edu. We will respond to submissions with notifications of acceptance a few weeks after the submission deadline. We anticipate the conference schedule will be circulated in May.

Conference Organizers:

Afra Afsharipour (University of California, Davis, School of Law)
Tony Casey (The University of Chicago Law School)
Eric C. Chaffee (The…

Yesterday, I was privileged to attend a wonderful Knoxville Symphony Orchestra performance as part of its Chamber Classics Series.  The featured piece was the Bach Concerto for Two Violins–an amazing piece of work.  It was preceded in the program by a wonderfully catchy Stravinski Octet.  The second half of the program focused solely on a Shostakovich piece (arranged by Rudolph Barshai): Chamber Symphony, Op. 73a.  I want to focus here for a moment on this last composition.

Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian (Soviet) composer.  He died back in 1975.  As my husband and I looked at the program in anticipation of the Shostakovich work, we could not help but think of the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.  We have watched with horror and sadness the violence, destruction, displacement, and more.  Of course, the program for the concert today was many months in the making; the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra could not have anticipated that a Russian composer’s music would be played in these circumstances . . . .

In his introduction to the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony, our conductor, Aram Demirjian, explained that Shostakovich was periodically critical of the Soviet government, despite its patronage of his work.  He explained that the…

Last week, I had the privilege of presenting at the first of three sessions in an academic research symposium cohosted by George Mason’s institute for Humane Studies and Florida Atlantic University’s Madden Center for Value Creation.  The symposium, Contemporary Challenges in Corporate Governance, has two spring semester online (Zoom) components and an in-person session in August in Seattle, Washington.  The program in which I was featured, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives,” also included two management scholars (Siri Terjesen from Florida Atlantic University and Aaron Hill from the University of Florida).  We each had the opportunity to talk about our work in the DEI space, engage with audience questions, and (in breakout rooms) discuss ongoing research projects and questions with other participants.  The format was very engaging.  And friend-of-the-BLPB Paul Rose was in attendance saying nice things about our blog.  (Thanks, Paul!)

We should do more of this.  And when I say “this,” I mean getting together with scholars from other fields.  Paul and I ended up in a fun conversation with a philosopher who is working on issues involving the purpose of the corporation, which led us into a productive discussion of the nature of fiduciary duties–to…

❤️  It’s Valentine’s Day!

Time for candy and flowers,

Not for posting blogs.

 

Until next week, then,

When I will be back with more.

Be my Valentine?  ❤️

OKLAHOMA CITY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW invites applications for one or more tenured or tenure-track faculty positions to begin with the 2022-23 academic year. We welcome applications from candidates with interests in any area of law, but we are particularly interested in candidates with a teaching interest in business organizations, energy law, environmental law, healthcare law, homeland security and national security, or secured transactions. We welcome candidates whose approaches in research will add to the scope and depth of our faculty scholarship.

Candidates should have an excellent academic background, demonstrated potential to be a productive scholar, a strong commitment to the practice of inclusion, and a strong commitment to becoming an engaged classroom teacher. Candidates must have a J.D. degree from an ABA accredited law school and be licensed to practice law in one of the states or the District of Columbia.

Oklahoma City University School of Law is located in downtown Oklahoma City and is deeply engaged with the legal, business, and governmental communities. Oklahoma City has been named “American’s Most Livable Community” and is consistently ranked among the most affordable and prosperous cities, among the top cities for entrepreneurs and small businesses, and among the best-run large cities.…

I cannot resist sharing with you today a proud moment that I had last week.  One of the 3L students that I mentor wrote a blog post that our Leading as Lawyers blog published. I could not be more proud.

I had been encouraging this student–a young woman I deeply admire–to write a post for us for a number of months.  She wasn’t sure.  But I kept telling her that she had such compelling stories to tell.  Nevertheless, she remained unsure until recently that anything she would write could speak in a powerful enough way about leadership.

More recently, the pieces of her professional development puzzle have started to fall into place.  As a result she could see it–she found her voice; she knew what she had to say.  The result of her labors can be found here.  The title alone is enough to make a business law prof proud: The Unlikely Avenue from Hopeful Environmental Litigator to Inspired Transactional Lawyer.  You can click on the link and read the post in its entirety.  But here is the bottom line:

When I came to law school, I was so scared of “selling out.” I thought that transactional law…

I begin teaching again on Wednesday.  The past few weeks have been occupied with course preparation as well as catching up on editing, writing, and other tasks abandoned during a month+ focused on the grading period, attentiveness to  a downturn in my dad’s health, Christmas, a nasty cold, and intensive physical therapy.  As I have focused on the spring semester, I continue to be concerned about helping to teach my students critical and intensive thinking, in and outside legal reasoning.  On this day honoring the life and many legacies of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I am inspired in my work by this passage from his writing–specifically, Chapter 1 of Strength to Love (1963; Pocket Book ed. 1964):

 . . . The tough mind is sharp and penetrating, breaking through the crust of legends and myths and sifting the true from the false. The tough-minded individual is astute and discerning. He has a strong austere quality that makes for firmness of purpose and solidness of commitment.

Who doubts that this toughness is one of man’s greatest needs? Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and…